7 Ways to Make Motherhood Better

Motherhood is hard.

Yes. Well, no.

It can be hard for a couple of reasons:

Your new at it

You are over-scheduling yourself and your kids and there is just no time leftover

You are trying to control everything instead of letting it go

Motherhood gets easier and more pleasurable for me because I’ve been doing it for a while, I refuse to over-schedule and I let it go.

I’ve currently got a kid with his head on my lap begging me for food. Another yelling from another room that he wants to do another activity – with me. My youngest squealing for more breakfast even though he’s had a dodgy tummy for a week.

So I am not living in a parallel universe – I have just taken the time to make room in my life for myself. Because that is the only thing you have the power to change.

Work on yourself. You CAN’T change other people.

I thought I could. I thought you spoke to people, told them how they should behave and that would be it. But no.

You can only change yourself and you change your situation.

But how to change yourself? My change started with the understanding that you get one life to live and if you are not doing what you truly want to do then that’s is your own fault.

That was a profound realisation for me. We don’t get another chance at life. This is it. This is the one life that we get to live out our dreams. What was I waiting for?

When you start to respect yourself, love yourself (warts and all), and accept life the way it is – everything changes.

The way you view the world changes and so everything in your world is different.

One of my dreams was to have children and the realisation of that dream was even more beautiful than I thought it would be.

I could spend the rest of my life moaning about how my “me” time is gone, my house is a disaster and that all I do is run around after the kids but I don’t choose to see that as my reality.

Instead I see my life and my motherhood journey as:

Sweet kisses at bedtime and a thousand whispers of gratitude from their sweet little voices

Sleepy morning cuddles

A house filled with miraculous chaos

Cast your mind back to the time of the birth of your first child and remember that amazing sense of love, achievement, pure joy and super woman strength.

One of my friends Amy Taylor-Kabbaz put it so eloquently when she says, in her new book, Happy Mama, “After the birth of my eldest child Scarlett, in 2007, I stood at the window of the maternity ward believing I was the most powerful woman on earth. Despite the birth itself being far from perfect, all I could think about was how amazing it was that I’d created and birthed a new life.”

Women can create people. Think about how amazing that is. We can grow little human beings inside of us. If that is not the most powerful thing in the world then I don’t know what is.

Getting through a day with crazy children is a walk in the park compared to that feat.

I love the quote by Marianne Williamson, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.”

It is scary to take charge of your own life. To believe that it is yourself, and only yourself that has created the life you are living now. That each thought, each opinion, decision and conversation has led you to this point in your life. Only you can decide what your life is going to look like.

Do you want to look back on your motherhood journey and be able to smell that baby smell because you were truly present?

Do you want to look into your grown up children’s eyes and see the understanding and acknowledgement of the sacrifices you have made. To see their admiration because you didn’t complain about it because you know and they know that it was a choice?

Everyday I choose to be a Mother of three kids. Whether that day is vomit filled, sleep deprived or filled with memorable moments it is my choice to be here and I am going to love every minute of it.

I will stroke their little foreheads and whisper words of love. I will let them know that it is ok for them to be themselves. Let them know that the world will try to take their essence but that they can get it back.

Because I got myself back -so I know and now they know that it is possible. To make Motherhood better you have to believe in your own power.

If you are not crazed then the days are less crazy

If you are calm then you’ll find peaceful moments.

If you are happy then the household starts to smile

7 Ways To Make Motherhood Better

1. Spend time with You – Write a list of things you love to do and do them – write down 10 and rotate them
2. Believe in your own power – remember times that you have felt on top of the world and know that it was not because you got lucky but that you did this, only you. You made a human, you fell in love, you reached a goal, you are just plain awesome.
3. Make a conscious effort to stop complaining. If you need to vent, vent but do this once and don’t relive it – ask yourself has complaining ever helped anything? Has saying your tired, bored, insane, too busy, hemmed in – ever helped anything? You have created this situation. Own it and find the positives.
4. Gratitude – just the act of writing a few things down or saying them out loud to your husband or kids can greatly improve your mood and outlook.
5. Look at your life and remove the shoulds – your kid doesn’t need to go to every birthday party if it is ruining your weekends and family time – they don’t need to do every sport and they certainly don’t need every moment of their time filled up with activities. You could do that for them if it makes you happy and them happy or you could stop all activities for a term and see how you feel, see what changes.
6. Let go – understand that you don’t control anything. No matter how much you plan, scheme, manipulate…ultimately life will give you what it gives you. I love the concept in, The Untethered Soul, where Michael Singer talks about our past hurts and how we form walls around our hearts and control situations to never let the hurt happen again. He says that it is like getting a thorn and instead of pulling it out we build thicker and thicker walls around it and more elaborate schemes so that nothing touches the thorn. We think that we are protecting ourself from the thorn but what we are doing is letting the thorn control our whole life. Where we go, who we hang out with, how much we give of ourselves. Its actually an insane way to live. He says that every time we get that defensive feeling we should breath and not let our heart close. Whatever you do don’t close – just stay open. Just let the hurt come and go …because it will go, everything changes and nothing ever stays the same in life.
7. Meditate – The culmination of all these practices is to find your true self and there is no tool that can dig deeper than meditation to find you. Because when you are being authentic, when you are following the path that is aligned with your heart then everything falls into place and life just gets easier. Mothering gets easier. Start with five minutes. Sit with yourself.

So you decide what you want to believe. How you want your view of Motherhood to be.

Hard?

Or Beautiful?

It’s your choice because you are powerful beyond measure.

xxx